There has been increasing interest in the development of techniques for the detection of explosive materials. Recent terrorist activities including that of attempts to cause the destruction of civil aircraft in flight, as well as efforts to detonate explosives in places where large groups of people congregate, have heightened this interest. In addition, there is interest in preventing theft of such explosive materials from manufacturing plants.
Present approaches to the detection of explosives involve the use of comprehensive physical searches, X-ray and similar equipment, and dogs trained to sniff out the presence of certain types of explosive materials.
These approaches are either unwieldy or are of limited usefulness.